Saturday 24 May 2014

On Redirecting Hatred

Didn't we once share some tacit understanding that the working class should look out for one another? Now those most willing to condemn the poor seem to be the poor themselves, eagerly heaping contempt on people within our own communities. Blame immigrants, blame benefit claimants or the unemployed, blame whatever fraction of the lower classes being grossly misrepresented in the Daily Mail this week, blame the moral failings of individuals rather than the failings of society itself. And reserve little hatred for the cunts at the top - the people evading billions of pounds of tax, the bankers who single-handedly arse fucked the economy, the MP's using the public's money to buy three piece fucking sofas. It is not a coincidence that all this negative coverage of benefit claimants coincides with the Tories slashing those benefits. This government wants to fuck you, and if you continue to direct your indignation at every scape goat it dreams up, then you're going to let it.

Monday 5 May 2014

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits: Movie Resurrection

This was written for Screenrobot.com to be apart of it's 'Movie Resurrection' feature - a revision of potentially good films that got bad reviews - but the film was shit so my review ended up too negative to fit the brief and subsequently went unpublished...

With the movie industry so often accused of treating women as little more than seductive set dressing, it's unfortunate when a film with the potential to present multi-layered (and fully-clothed) female characters to a mainstream audience fails not only in this endeavor, but as an effective piece of film-making overall.


Such is the case with Don Roo's 'The Other Woman' (originally titled 'Love and Other Impossible Pursuits'), which gropes at a multitude of poignant subjects - motherhood, infidelity and grief - without ever delving deep or dark enough to grasp any one of them.


Adapted from a novel by Ayete Waldamn, 'The Other Woman' is the story of Emilia Greenleaf, played by Natalie Portman - seldom seen grappling with such an ambiguous, potentially unlikeable role - who's central character conflicts are introduced, alongside a quirky indie soundtrack, within the first ten minutes of the film. In a marriage born of her affair with an already betrothed man, Emilia is a pariah among mothers, a 'home-wrecker' who's entrance in a room of Manhattanite first-wives can induce a flurry of whispers and exchanged glances.


The history of Emilia's courtship with husband Jack (Scot Cohen) is shown in a series of flashbacks that, in a fashion indicative of the whole film, feel like a selection of inconsequential moments, building to no real emotional intensity. The affair is treated so light-heatedly, with all the gut-wrenching parts like Jack coming clean to his wronged-spouse punched out, that one is led to wonder if Roo's has already forgiven Emilia for her adultery long before the audience can even begin to consider it.


Distancing her even further from the clique of motherhood is Emilia's questionable habitation of the term 'mother'. Having lost her three-day old daughter Isabelle to SIDS, Emilia's remaining maternal responsibilities lie with the product of her husbands first marriage, her finicky, precocious stepson William (Charlie Tahan), who is frequently used as a weapon against Emilia by his preposterously over-furious mother Catherine (Lisa Kudrow).



The two share an antagonistic, uneasy dynamic. William is a child unarguably difficult to love, and Emilia is uncharitable in her affections; he jabs at her grief, highlighting her paternal failings in comparison to his pediatrician mother; she mocks his every childish utterance with a scathing sarcasm above his comprehension in all but it's underlying contemptuous tone. They make a very watchable combination, Tehan proving a competent actor.

But whilst William's faults can be excused by his age and the fierce loyalty demanded of him by his mother, the explanation provided for Emilia's petty hostility - guilt over the possibility that she inadvertently smothered Isabelle to death - does not quite satisfy, and feels more like a desperate, last-minute grab for sympathy.


Perhaps to counter Emilia's unlikeability, ex wife Catherine is a walking caricature of the scorned woman; acidic, overly shrill and confrontational, she is a typical bourgeoisie social-climber, preoccupied with health food fads, ivy-league schools, and maintaining an overall appearance of wealth. Kudrow plays the role convincingly and with surprising venom, a performance wasted on such a clumsily handled character.


In Waldman's novel, the contrasts between Emilia and Catherine offer a stab at social commentary. Catherine represents societies mold of wife and mother, a mold into which Emilia does not fit - she is brazenly sexual, unconcerned with domestic responsibilities or her potential home-wrecker label, and lacks any apparent natural maternal instincts toward any child but her own.  In Roo's film, however, Emilia's characterisation is so vague, plodding and weak, that we never successfully pin her as any of these things, and this idea goes entirely over the audiences heads. At times, it's difficult to to gauge Portman's aptitude for playing Emilia at all, the character is so cluttered with contradictions and disconnected from the audience.


The extent to which actresses and characters alike are squandered becomes most apparent in a confrontation between the two women, when Catherine informs Emilia in clipped, clinical tones that "you didn't kill your baby." This is easily The Other Woman's most powerful scene, Catherine's act of mercy for her ex-husbands mistress a small testimony that sins we commit against one another are irrelevant in the face of our responsibilities as women, as mothers, or simply as human beings. The film does not effectively build towards this moment, nor treat it as any more significant than the myriad of emotional confrontations that precede it, and yet despite being criminally underplayed it still retains some capacity to stir the heart.


At it's peak moments, The Other Woman teeters on the cusp of worthiness, illuminating briefly for it's audience some of the shadier areas of familial relationships - before plunging them back into darkness. At it's worst, and despite the valiant efforts of Tahan, Kudrow and Portman, it feels like a feature legnth soap opera, delivering neither genuine insight nor genuine entertainment.